People's Democracy

(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of
India (Marxist)

Vol.
XXV

No. 25

June 24, 2001

Nazis and Bush
Family History

Carla Binion

THIS article on
Nazis in the Republican Party was originally published in Online Journal on January
28, 2000. However, the following includes additional information regarding George H W
Bushs father, Prescott, and his maternal grandfather, George Herbert (Bert) Walker,
and the fact that the US government investigated their financing of Adolf Hitler.

One book
referenced here, Christopher Simpsons "Blowback," was praised by
journalist Seymour Hersh as "the ultimate book about the worst kind of cold war
thinking."

Nora Levin,
Director, Holocaust Archive, Gratz College, said "The full story of this
countrys shameful, cynical collaboration with Nazi criminals has not been told until
now with the publication of Simpsons book." Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman
said, "Blowback" is a must read for anyone who wants to understand
postwar policy on Nazi war criminals and the cold war."

In another
Simpson book, "The Splendid Blonde Beast," the author wrote about George
H W Bushs father, Prescott, and his maternal grandfather, George Herbert Walker.
Both Bert Walker and Prescott Bush were powerful financial supporters of Adolf Hitler.

Walker was
president of Union Banking Corporation, a firm that traded with Germany and helped German
industrialists consolidate Hitlers political power. Simpson says Union Banking
became a Nazi money-laundering machine.

Walker helped
take over North American operations of Hamburg-Amerika Line, a shipping line and cover for
IG Farbens Nazi espionage unit in the US Hamburg-Amerika smuggled in German agents,
and brought in money for bribing American politicians to support Hitler. A 1934
congressional investigation showed Hamburg-Amerika subsidized Nazi propaganda efforts in
the US.

George H W
Bushs father, Prescott, was a board member of Union Banking and a senior partner in
a Union Banking affiliatethe investment firm Brown Brothers, Harriman.

The US
government investigated both Bert Walker and Prescott Bush, and under the Trading with the
Enemy Act seized all shares of Union Banking, including shares held by Prescott Bush. The
government held that "huge sections of Prescott Bushs empire had been operated
on behalf of Nazi Germany and had greatly assisted the German war effort."

Investigative
reporter Christopher Simpson says in "Blowback" that after World War II,
Nazi émigrés were given CIA subsidies to build a far-right-wing power base in the US.
These Nazis assumed prominent positions in the Republican Partys "ethnic
outreach committees." Simpson documents the fact that these Nazis did not come to
America as individuals but as part of organized groups with fascist political agendas. The
Nazi agenda did not die along with Adolf Hitler. It moved to America (or a part of it did)
and joined the far right of the Republican Party.

Simpson shows
how the State Department and the CIA put high-ranking Nazis on the intelligence payroll
"for their expertise in propaganda and psychological warfare," among other
purposes. The most important Nazi employed by the US was Reinhard Gehlen, Hitlers
most senior eastern front military intelligence officer. After Germanys defeat
became certain, Gehlen offered the US certain concessions in exchange for his own
protection.

Gehlen promoted
hyped up cold war propaganda on behalf of the political right in this country, and helped
shape US perceptions of the cold war. Journalist Russ Bellant ("Old Nazis, the New
Right, and the Republican Party") shows that Laszlo Pasztor, a convicted Nazi war
collaborator, built the Republican émigré network. Pasztor, who served as adviser to
Republican Paul Weyrich, belonged to the Hungarian Arrow Cross, a group that helped
liquidate Hungarys Jews. Pasztor was founding chairman of the Republican Heritage
Groups Council.

Two months
before the November 1988 presidential election, a small newspaper, Washington Jewish
Week, disclosed that a coalition for the Bush campaign included a number of outspoken
Nazis and anti-Semites. The article prompted six leaders of Bushs coalition to
resign.

According to
Russ Bellant, Nazi collaborators involved in the Republican Party included:

(1) Radi
Slavoff, GOP Heritage Councils executive director, and head of "Bulgarians for
Bush." Slavoff was a member of a Bulgarian fascist group, and he put together an
event in Washington honouring Holocaust denier, Austin App.

(2) Florian
Galdau, director of GOP outreach efforts among Romanians, and head of "Romanians for
Bush." Galdau was once an Iron Guard recruiter, and he defended convicted Nazi war
criminal Valerian Trifa.

The Philadelphia
Inquirer ran an article on the Bush teams inclusion of Nazis (David Lee Preston,
"Fired Bush backer one of several with possible Nazi links," September 10,
1988.) The newspaper also ran an investigative series on Nazi members of the Bush
coalition. The articles confirmed that the Bush team included members listed by Russ
Bellant.

Journalist
Martin A Lee, has written for The Nation, Rolling Stone, The San Francisco
Chronicle, and other publications. In "The Beast Reawakens," Lee
confirms that during both the Reagan and Bush years, the Republican Partys ethnic
outreach arm recruited members from the Nazi émigré network.

Lee says that
the Republican Partys ethnic outreach division had an outspoken hatred of President
Jimmy Carters Office of Special Investigations (OSI), an organization dedicated to
tracking down and prosecuting Nazi war collaborators who entered this country illegally.
Former Republican Pat Buchanan attacked Carters OSI after it deported a few
suspected Nazi war criminals.

According to
Lee, public relations man Harold Keith Thompson was principal US point man for the postwar
Nazi support network known as die Spinne, or the Spider. In the late 40s and early 50s,
Thompson worked as the chief North American representative for the remaining National
Socialist German Workers Party and the SS. Lee writes that the wealthy Thompson gave
generously to Republican candidates Senator Jesse Helms and would-be senator Oliver North.
Thompsons money gained him membership in the GOPs Presidential Legion of
Merit. Lee says Thompson also "received numerous thank-you letters from the
Republican National Committee." Those letters are now in the Hoover Institution
Special Collections Library.

Christopher
Simpson writes in "Blowback" that in 1983, Ronald Reagan presented a
Medal of Freedom, the countrys highest civilian honour, to CIA émigré programme
consultant James Burnham. Burnham was a psychological warfare consultant who promoted
something called "liberationism." Just before the 1952 election, the CIA worked
up a multimillion-dollar public relations campaign aimed at selling Americans on expanding
cold war activities in Europe. Part of the guiding theory (given the name
"liberationism") was the idea that certain Nazi leaders from World War II should
be brought in as "freedom fighters" against the USSR.

Reagan said that
Burnhams ideas on liberation "profoundly affected the way America views itself
and the world," adding, "I owe [Burnham] a personal debt, because throughout the
years of traveling on the mashed-potato circuit I have quoted [him] widely." Reagan
may not have known Burnhams theories were based on his work on projects that
enlisted many Nazi collaborators, but it seems that Reagans CIA Director Casey or
former CIA Director, Vice President George Bush, would have informed him.

At a May 9, 1984
press conference, Simon Wiesenthal said, "Nazi criminals were the principal
beneficiaries of the Cold War." The cold war mentality, hyped by Reinhard Gehlen and
other Nazis, became the shelter for tens of thousands of Nazi criminals. Helping the far
right in this country to promote cold war hysteria became the Nazi war criminals
"reason for being." As Christopher Simpson says, the cold war became those
criminals means "to avoid responsibility for the murders they had
committed."

Journalist
Seymour Hersh says Christopher Simpsons "Blowback" is "the
ultimate book about the worst kind of cold war thinking, in which some of our most
respected statesmen made shameful decisions that they mistakenly believed to be
justified." To this day, says Simpson, the US intelligence agencies hide the scope of
their post-World War II collaboration with Nazi criminals.

Are Republicans
like George H W Bush, Oliver North, and Jesse Helms aware they have been assisted by Nazi
collaborators?

Bush once worked
for the CIA and should have known about the nature of the Nazis in his 88 campaign.
No doubt he knows the history of Nazi/CIA collaboration.

Whether or not
Bush knew of the fascists involvement in his campaign, the Republican Party should
have done a far better screening job. One thing is certain: The intelligence agencies know
the scope and extent of Nazi involvement with the political right in this country. It is a
shame they keep it hidden from the majority of the American people.